Sunday, February 2, 2014

Growing up in Canada with British, Scottish (and a dozen or so other nationalities thrown in for good measure) ancestry, I've had the good fortune to have some seriously good home cooks in our family. (Not to mention a few world class Chefs). I've always, always called an egg fried in the middle of a cut out piece of bread, a toad in a hole. I've recently been re-educated.... Informed by a very rightly informed informer, that a toad in a hole, is in fact..... This!

It's Yorkshire pudding with a halved sausage stuck in.

Soooooo Delicious!

I made a traditional Yorkshire pudding batter:

1 cup of flour

1/2 cup of water

1/2 cup of milk

2 eggs

dash of salt

I beat it up and let it rest.

Then I put a tsp of olive oil and 1/4 tsp of butter in each of twelve muffin holes in a muffin tin.

I heated the oily muffin pan up for five minutes in a preheated 400 degree oven until it was bubbling.

Then I quickly poured in the batter half way up each muffin cup and sploched in a halved precooked sausage into each tin along with a cherry tomato. Do this very quickly. You don't want the fat to cool down or you'll lose the rise of the batter.

I baked it at 400 for 35 minutes then turned it down to 350 and baked it for another 10 minutes.

Serve them right away. They are popovers and will deflate if left too long. But it's not terrible if they deflate. They're just as delicious. Just not as beautiful.

Here's a very simple Valentines set made using STAEDTLER push molds and STAEDTLER Fimo Effect clay. These are a mixture of Fimo Effect translucent and metallic gold swirled together to make a marbled effect. I used the push molds to make each halves of the heart beads, then I joined them together before baking and curing the pieces.

I sanded the heart beads after they were hardened to make them super smooth.

I also made some super simple beads. Just balls of clay with holes.

I made swirly beads by turning a worm of clay around a toothpick and baking it.